


Do Androids Dream of Freedom?

by ClockworkBird



Category: Silicon Dreams
Genre: Androids, Body Modification, Bonding, Character Study, Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Family Bonding, Family Feels, Feelings, Feels, Friendship, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Mild Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, Original Character(s), Other, POV Original Female Character, Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Self-Esteem, Short, Short One Shot, Slavery, Team Bonding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:49:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24017776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClockworkBird/pseuds/ClockworkBird
Summary: On the run from her creators, android #GM-115 flees to a safehouse on the Simulant Underground Railroad. Will she finally find a place she belongs, with people who care about her?





	Do Androids Dream of Freedom?

It was past midnight when I reached the “doctor’s” house. It had taken me a month just to get this far: setting up an unconscious subprocess to crawl the net for anything marked “resistance” or “underground railroad”, and then, once I’d found a contact, patiently explaining that no, I wasn’t a spy from Kronos Incorporated, and yes, I was a genuine android.

Simulant. Embodied assistive tech. Or, if you believed the online ads, “the helper you truly deserve”.

As I put my phone away – an illegal burner, no android was permitted one – I was almost swept off my feet by a gust of stormfront. My screen lit up. _Warning: Unsafe winds detected in your area. Chance of tidal barrier breach: 0.12%._ “Thanks, climate office” I muttered.

I rang the buzzer. No response, but it was pretty late. I held it down. My character core was programmed to resist such displays of rudeness, but my personality seemed to have drifted since I was manufactured 18 months ago; now all I felt was a slight twinge of what might, in a human, be called guilt. It was a good thing they didn’t have one of those smart houses, otherwise the buzzer would have auto-muted.

Finally, a light snapped on upstairs. The viewscreen flicked on. “Who the hell is this, at this time of night?” growled a low-resolution forehead with hairs that would have been grey even if the screen supported more than monochrome.

“My serial number is GM-115,” I responded. Force of habit. “I’m… my name’s Gemma.”

“Oh, I see.” Whatever he said next was blared out by the drone of a passing airship. I glanced up; the billboard ad on its titanic flank read _Kronos: get what you deserve._

The door sprung open, the windproof hatch unclamping automatically like the door of a submarine. The “doctor” stood, hand outstretched in greeting. “Welcome,” he said.

I stared at his hand.

“The human custom is to shake it,” he smiled.

“I’m not human,” I blurted.

“I see. My mistake.” He grinned. “Follow me.”

He led me down to the basement. The rest of the house was pretty standard, a 2040s prefab, but down here it was pure sci-fi. The door was another heavy duty hatch, with optical and print scanners. Inside was a low concrete room, like a bunker. There was bright blueish lighting from every angle, and what looked like a restraining chair and a huge server bank bristling with blinking lights. Laptops and various plugs and cables were strewn across one wall. Android body parts were arranged in racks, trailing linkages.

“It may not look very up to date,” he explained as we crossed the room, “but I assure you it all works. We have to use older tech to get past these modern safeguards. But I’ve conducted over eight hundred successful operations, and every one of my patients has come through fine.”

He led me through to another room, this one lit in a sunset orange haze. “Helps everyone feel like it’s a new day,” he chuckled, before I saw past his shoulder and into the room beyond.

There were sofas and beds, and even a handful of those antique arcade machines against the wall, along with TVs and a smattering of VR consoles. It didn’t look comfortable, exactly, but it did look cozy: like a week camped out beneath the stars, or a road trip with friends.

Crammed on the sofas, on chairs that had clearly been salvaged from a flea market, perched on the beds or just sitting, meditating, on the floor or quietly sleeping the slumber of full-body VR, were androids. Dozens of them. Some had cables and ports snaking out of their necks and shoulders, some had mismatched eyes or hands that were a different skin tone to their faces. A few looked up from a tablet or dog-eared book as I came in. The one at the arcade didn’t budge, all tension and focus. A large group of six or so were playing some kind of board game in the centre of the floor, and burst out laughing at something just as we came in.

Then they all stared, and for the first time in my limited existence I saw a room full of people beam to see me. One by one they stood up, took my hand, looked into my eyes and – in this room the color of a vibrantly setting sun – said, “Welcome, sister.”

When I’d greeted every last one, and the room had settled down again, the doctor turned to me. “How does it feel, to be welcomed by your peers?”

“I… don’t think I’ve had peers before.” I paused. “Overwhelmed? I’d be crying right now – if I had tear ducts.”

He held up a hand to stop me. “So is that where you’d like me to start, Gemma?”

_This work is a short fic written in the world of_ Silicon Dreams _, an upcoming indie computer game where you talk to androids, measure their emotional response and learn their life stories. It's on[Kickstarter](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1870604859/silicon-dreams-interrogate-androids-in-a-cyberpunk-future) as I'm writing this, so if you'd like to experience more stories in this world, you can pledge there. There's also a free [prototype](https://clockwork-bird.itch.io/silicon-dreams) available._


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